When Ukrainian Leniie Umerova crossed into Russia on her way to see her ailing father in their native Crimea in late 2022, ...

Comprising about 12 percent of Crimea's population, these ethnic Sunni Muslims have a long, troubled history with Moscow. People hold Crimean Tatar flags at a rally near the parliament building in ...

In 1991, the Crimean region voted to restore the Crimean Autonomous Republic--enabling the Crimean ethnic Russian population to distance themselves from the Ukrainian government.

On a single night in 1944, 200,000 Crimean Tatars were forced onto cattle cars and forcibly deported from the Black Sea peninsula. They've been fighting for rights in their homeland ever since.

Russia has been the dominant power in Crimea for most of the past 200 years, since it annexed the region in 1783. But it was transferred by Moscow to Ukraine - then part of the Soviet Union - in 1954.

But what has drawn the most notice is Umerov's ethnic background as a Crimean Tatar, representing an often-overlooked part of Ukraine's Indigenous history.

Crimea, which juts out into the Black Sea off southern Ukraine, was absorbed into the Russian Empire along with most ethnic Ukrainian territory by Catherine the Great in the 18th century.

Nikita Khrushchev used Crimea to change the ethnic make-up of Ukraine and thereby undermine western Ukrainian nationalism. Culturally, Crimea was a bad fit in Soviet Ukraine.

In years past, people flocked to Black Sea beaches on Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. Now, as Russia’s war on Ukraine enters its 18th month, the peninsula is both a playground and a battleground.

Ukraine's Black Sea peninsula was invaded by Russia in 2014 and illegally annexed from Ukraine. Read more at straitstimes.com ...